Carly Simon: romance, pain, anticipation—if it's a human impulse, then Carly Simon has sung about it. Now the singer who has provided the soundtrack to a thousand breakups reveals how it all came together

Interview, July, 2004 by Michael Kors

CS: You know why that was? In part because disc jockeys were allowed to play what they wanted to. There weren't regimented playlists--what they played was all based on their tastes. So many artists who came out during that time, including myself, were able to get on radio. New forms of singer-songwriters developed out of that. Certainly Bob Dylan paved the way, and the Beatles, but there weren't that many people in the '60s who were primarily singer-songwriters. There was Randy Newman, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carole King. That's what I was listening to, and I thought to myself, Gosh, I want to write songs.

MK: Did you write with your sister?

CS: Sometimes, but the year I lived in France I started to write songs. Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music. I listened to all these Odetta records. She was my favorite singer. She wasn't a very good writer, but she was my favorite voice; so that was the first person I sounded like. Then I went through a big Peggy Lee stage, then I became Annie Ross, then Judy Collins. As a singer I tried on all these hats, these voices, these clothes, and eventually out came me.

MK: What kind of music did you grow up with in your house?

CS: My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything. That's possibly why I'm so eclectic. We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big. Both my uncles were jazz critics. And then Joey, my oldest sister, and Lucy, my middle sister, and me did three-part choir pieces like "Ave Maria." But when we listened to the radio, it was Bill Haley and the Comets or the Everly Brothers. You never went from one room to another without hearing a different kind of music, whether it was my father playing Chopin, my brother listening to "Little Darlin'" or "Tequila," or Joey--she was the opera singer--vocalizing, or Lucy playing the guitar, or my mother singing a lullaby to one of her dogs. I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing. Do you know how hard it is to sing "You're So Vain"?

MK: I've tried it at a karaoke bar, and let me tell you, it's not easy.

CS. [laughs] It has big intervals.

MK: But when you came out with Torch [1981], an album of pop standards, did anyone say, "You shouldn't do this"?

CS: The head of my record company said, "It's not your fan base. It's going to ruin your career." And Warner Brothers told him not to push the record. Then Linda Ronstadt came out with What's New[1983, an album of traditional pop standards], and it was a huge success.

MK: People have to realize that if you're a creative person, then you want to take risks. You've got to force yourself not to be too comfortable.

CS: I'm still more comfortable with standards than with my own songs.

MK: But is singing them less personal?

CS: Well, I make every song I sing personal. I've never chosen a song that wasn't.